‘Simple Rules’ for Running a Business

By

Angela Chen

Apr 24, 2015 7:00 am ET

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From the 20-page cellphone contract to the five-pound employee handbook, even the simple things seem to be getting more complicated.

Companies have been complicating things for themselves, too—analyzing hundreds of factors when making decisions, or consulting reams of data to resolve every budget dilemma. But those requirements might be wasting time and muddling priorities.

So argues Donald Sull, a lecturer at the Sloan School of Management at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who has also worked for McKinsey & Co. and Clayton, Dubilier & Rice LLC. In the book Simple Rules: How to Thrive in a Complex World, out this week from Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, he and Kathleen Eisenhardt of Stanford University claim that straightforward guidelines lead to better results than complex formulas.

Mr. Sull recently spoke with At Work about what companies can do to simplify, and why five basic rules can beat a 50-item checklist.